In Search of the True West : Culture, Economics, and Problems of Russian Development

This text documents Russian efforts to appropriate Western solutions to the problem of economic backwardness since the time of Catherine the Great.

Educated Russians searched for Western nations, ideas and social groups that embodied universal economic truths applicable to their own country.

The book describes Russian Westernization and raises questions about core values of Western culture and how cultural values and priorities are determined.

In an era of rapid Western colonial expansion, the Russian quest for the "right" Western economic model became more urgent: was Russia condemned to the fate of India if it did not become an England?

Today, Russia's painful modernizing traditions shape the policies of contemporary reformers, who seem as certain as their predecessors that economic progress requires wholesale obliteration of the past.